ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The easiest way to get removed from the Internet and social media is to announce that you believe the 2020 election was stolen.
Even though publications like The New York Times and TechCrunch as well as countless Russia collusion-hoaxers have suggested the 2016 election might have been rigged, only a fool would even hint at such a thing regarding the 2020 presidential election at this moment in time. Unless, of course, you want to become another #CancelCulture martyr (which is, let’s be honest, becoming a bit passe).
To be clear: I absolutely am not suggesting the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump and his supporters.
After all, there doesn’t appear to be any truth to the spy-thriller-esque notion that voting machines designed for Hugo Chavez and purchased in China but located in Germany flipped votes to Joe Biden.
What I have come to believe, however, after extensive research that appears in my new book “Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption” is that the manipulation of social media platforms and activism by partisan Democrats in Silicon Valley was a deciding factor in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Though this topic is impossible to sum up in a single newspaper article (I devote a substantial portion of the book to this topic), here are some essential details:
Some of the most powerful people in the world, the Masters of the Universe in Silicon Valley — none of them elected, most of them anonymous — turned dials to increase or decrease the flow of critical information the American electorate needed to make informed decisions in the presidential race.
The most obvious example of Silicon Valley’s interference was the suppression and deletion of accurate stories about Hunter Biden broken by The New York Post for supposedly being Russian disinformation. The information was neither Russian nor was it shown to be inaccurate. Ironically, the baseless suggestion that The Posts’ scoops were “Russian disinfo” was not censored or throttled on social platforms.
Breitbart has been the target of Big Tech censorship for years and, in 2020, was again first in line to be suppressed. On May 5, 2020, Google killed all of Breitbart’s traffic on searches for “Joe Biden.” If you searched for “Joe Biden” or “Biden,” the chances of you getting a Breitbart.com article were virtually nil unless you add the word “Breitbart” to the search. This happened all at once, like the flip of a light switch, right in the middle of the heat of the election.
The conservative Media Research Center surveyed 1,750 Biden voters in the swing states and found widespread ignorance of Biden scandals involving Hunter and former aide Tara Reade, who accused the future president of sexual assault; they also were unaware Kamala Harris had one of the most left-wing voting records in the U.S. Senate. Many of these voters were also unaware of the rapid economic growth, booming jobs numbers, advances toward Middle East peace, energy independence, and progress made toward a coronavirus vaccine made during Donald Trump’s presidency.
The MRC survey concluded that a whopping 17 percent of Biden voters would not have voted for him had they known about all eight aforementioned items.
If you had any doubt those who control the flow of information in this country were determined to get Trump out of power, look no further than Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook CEO spent hundreds of millions of dollars on “safe” election administration, but these efforts appear to have been little more than a de facto get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operation to benefit Democrats.
The centerpiece of this was COVID-safe “drop boxes.” These were bins that look like aluminum public trash cans, placed throughout the country, largely unprotected and unguarded (compared to in-person voting). These made it easier for people to “safely” turn in their mail-in ballots. Critics of the plan said that a high number of these drop boxes were placed in precincts that favor Democrats, particularly ones that were likely to be close races. These drop boxes weren’t necessary anyway, as in-person voting did not worsen the pandemic.
Yet, the sad reality is that Republicans, by and large, let the Masters of the Universe do all this. Perhaps it was because they feared harming the tech companies that were driving the stock markets to record highs, maybe they were following a blind loyalty to the free market, perhaps many were paid off by Big Tech lobbyists, certainly some were uninformed and ignorant. Whatever the explanation is, the GOP was wildly ineffective at protecting their own voters’ ability to freely read and share information.
All of this should outrage every American, not just Trump supporters. When a few unaccountable billionaires are allowed to put their thumbs on the scales of democracy, we don’t have democracy anymore — we have an oligarchy.
The good news is Republicans have a lot of possible solutions on the table. My first recommendation is to pursue legislation to treat social media platforms as common carriers like trains or phone companies; this would prevent them from discriminating based on political ideology (or any other reason, for that matter).
Breaking up the biggest technology companies, reforms to antitrust law, and reforming the safe harbor for censorship of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should all be considered. But most importantly, conservatives must turn to governors, legislatures, and Attorneys General in Republican-led states. This will take political willpower, but it can be done.
There are many tools available to states to regulate corporate power and prevent discrimination — now is the time to be bold, to experiment, to see what survives legal challenge and what does not. Conservative voters should not let Republicans get away with inaction, ineptitude or cowardice on the issue. The integrity of America’s electoral process is on the line.
• Alexander Marlow is the editor in chief of Breitbart News and author of “Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption” (Threshold Editions), out now. He hosts Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM 125, the Patriot.
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